North Canton to change policy on meeting minutes

NORTH CANTON The city will return to keeping word-for-word meeting minutes for two of its boards.

North Canton administration will again require verbatim minutes for its Planning Commission and Zoning and Standards Board of Appeals. In June, City Council passed two similar ordinances that allowed those boards to keep meeting summaries. That legislation also required meetings to be audio and video recorded.

"We're going back to what we've historically done. That's what really works best," said Mayor David J. Held.

The change follows a public record request that revealed minutes that city officials acknowledged weren't up to standards.

Chuck Osborne, a North Canton resident and frequent critic of city government, requested meeting minutes for those boards Nov. 12. At Monday's city council meeting, Osborne said his request had not been filled.

Osborne has since received those records, said Mayor David J. Held on Thursday.

"It's not acceptable for him to not have those public records in a timely manner. That's unacceptable," Held said.

The Canton Repository requested those same records Tuesday. It received them the next day. The exception was a Jan. 25 Planning Commission meeting. Those meeting minutes have not been prepared.

Why the change?

The city's Permits & Development department has been short-staffed. Employees fell behind on transcribing minutes, Held said.

The city is looking to reorganize that department next year and possibly hire additional clerks, said Director of Administration Mike Grimes.

In filling the record requests, it became apparent that the summary minutes for Planning Commission meetings were "not sufficient," said Law Director Tim Fox.

"We don't think what's been provided conveys what we wish to convey," he added.

The minutes are a page long, list those in attendance and what action was taken.

"We want to be the model for these things. That we respond to (record requests) quickly and appropriately ... We just want to get it right," Fox said. "This is embarrassing to me and we're going to it right."

The goal of moving to summary minutes was to be more cost efficient and effective, he said.

While summary minutes were more efficient — it took city employees hours to transcribe meetings word-for-word — the resulting minutes weren't effective in communicating what happened, he said.

Verbatim minutes are the only way to ensure meetings are recorded accurately and consistently, Held said.

The city will outsource the task of transcribing the meetings, he said, adding that it should cost a few hundred dollars per meeting.

"We believe that we're going to be able to do this in a more cost efficient manner by contracting it out and at the same time be more effective," Held said.